How is it possible to save 75% of take home ?
Is this after bills, mortgage, loans, etc or before ?
Congrats if you can accomplish this. Living in a high cost area with high mortgage and student loans definitely makes it difficult.
Naturally that would be after all expenses.
The wife and I save about 75% of our take home. On teacher's salaries. It'd be much easier if we made more. (Of course our take home includes lots of extra stuff, tutoring after school 3x per week, summer school, etc. So we do make more than the base teacher's salary, but that's due to extra work we put in.)
Here's (roughly) how we save 75% (the following is take home, after tax): base salary of ~40k each (we started lower, but both have Master's degrees.. Heh. 40k salaries with Master's degrees is just sad.). Earn ~15k in extra stuff.
Spend ~24k/yr. There's a 75% savings rate. That doesn't count money made from investments (rentals, equities, etc.). That money is saved as well, of course. I don't count the principal amount sent to loans as saved either.
We have a mortgage, student loans (though, sadly, my wife's student loan is paying off this month, after paying the minimum for years. Mine will end in another year or so. Wish I could make them last even longer.)
But our mortgage is cheap, we don't pay other interest (except for business purposes). We buy what we want, but we just don't want a lot of things.
It can be done, but I'm more and more convinced about the early mover advantage. Once you're locked into a large mortgage payment on a house bigger than you need, interest payments on a car that gets too few MPG, giant student loans, etc... It becomes much tougher. When you go for a simple life from the beginning, it flows naturally.
Our saving 75% isn't a sacrifice. We live a very cushy life. We could probably cut back and have a much higher savings rate.. I'd rather just spend whatever we want, though, like we do now.
If you're starting late, from a situation like that described above, there will have to be some painful adjustments made, IMO.